Pretty Hurts
by Your Candle on the Water
Summary: A certain shape shifter changes her physical appearance in hopes of becoming more beautiful.


**M'gann Week Day 7- Free for All**

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_Drip!_

_Drip!_

_Drip!_

The shower head was squeezing out the last of the water from its last use, the spaces between each drop of water growing bigger and bigger, the sound growing fainter and fainter.

The person who stepped out from the stall was a young woman; she was wrapped in a white fluffy towel, and her bright red hair was let down. She was humming softly while putting on her slippers, and then she walked to the sink in no hurry. Sure, it may have been, what, three in the morning, but with the missions getting later and later, three AM was the new ten PM. Besides, it was Friday night- or Saturday morning, if you want to put it that way; she didn't have anything waiting for her in the next few hours, save for the Saturday morning cartoons and sitcom reruns she was fond of.

As the steam from her shower cooled, the fog on the mirror above the sink condensed into small droplets of water, and the girl's reflection started to become visible. Unlike most humans on Earth, her skin was green, but even that pigmentation came from some effort on her part.

Her natural skin color was white, but not the pale skin that many in the Western world had; the color of her skin was whiter than bone, with hints of ashy gray that would make a human look as if he were about to die. When she would transform into a human, the alien made sure that her complexion was a little tan with a blush almost always on her face, but after a few weeks of going to high school, that part of her came almost naturally. Her friends in school would always ask her how she kept her skin so smooth and acne-free, and she would say that she was just lucky.

Now, looking in the mirror, her emerald skin, the symbol of superiority back in her home planet, was an anomaly here. The Martian practiced changing her skin color, from her default human hue, to deeper and richer shades, and, finding that her bright red hair didn't compliment some of the skin tones she tried, she started changing the color and length of her hair.

Soon enough, though, the constant transformations started to tire the alien out, and her skin, currently back to her human shade, started forming what the earthlings called, "Goosebumps." Despite this, the Martian continued to stand in front of the sink. She remembered leafing through all those fashion magazines, noting how there were few, if any, models who didn't fit a certain look- tall, skinny, light skin, and long, flowing hair.

In comparison, she was on the small side, both in her home planet and on Earth, and her hips were a little wider than what the magazines deemed acceptable, or even _normal_. Her breasts were a little smaller than those of the "most glamorous women alive," but, from her observations, were about the average size of those in her high school.

M'gann then looked at the bathroom door, making sure that it was locked, before using her telekinesis to unwind her towel from her body and hang it on the bar for the shower curtain. The verdant expanse of her body was exposed in all its glory. The Martian frowned. Her limbs and torso revealed her strength, but to her, her hips were too wide, her thighs were touching, she had too much muscle, her shoulders were too broad.

She started focusing her shape shifting powers on herself. Megan started smoothing out her limbs and torso, masking the strength found in her muscles. She shrunk the flesh in her thighs and narrowed down her hips. Finding the proportions on her lower half didn't suit her upper half of her body, she continued to shrink and smooth out her stomach, reduce the length of her shoulder blades, shed off the fat on her face, every little thing she found wrong in herself, she fixed.

Megan huffed, tired from thinking too hard. The mental exertion was magnified by the physical _pain_ of changing not just the fat content and the skin tone of her body, but even her muscle and bone structure. It was just too much. She then glanced at her reflection in the mirror.

The red head's eyes widened. She looked _emaciated_, like she could easily splinter off into pieces if she were in battle. She couldn't even recognize herself even more. In her quest to become prettier, Megan only found herself hating her appearance. She even preferred her White Martian form, the stigmatized race on Mars, to this.

She reverted back to her humanoid, Martian form, the green pigmentation and the return to her old self bringing with them a sigh of relief. _This_ is the form she knew and loved. She can take this form with a speck of effort on her part. Despite the media telling her to change the "little" things, M'gann found nothing wrong about how she was.

She was beautiful just the way she is.

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**AN: Western beauty standards, man. I was initially going to have our favorite Martian go through some harder trials in her quest for beauty, but it made _me_ uncomfortable to write about eating disorders. If you ever think you're not pretty enough, remember that physical beauty is not the be-all-end-all. Your beauty is measured in ways beyond the scale.**

**Review!**


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